I had one of those ulcer-inducing “Office Space”-type jobs for, like, five minutes, but it was worth it for the day our bosses surprised us with a “morale-boosting” office party — meaning we were shuttled into the conference room for cheese sandwiches, a tub of canned soda and unavoidable introductions to co-workers we’d hoped to never meet.
There, four actors greeted us with the kind of fake enthusiasm that told us these poor saps had just arrived at the base of the showbiz ladder. But they soldiered on with such steroidal enthusiasm, you might logically have suspected the company was holding their children hostage. They told lame jokes, sang bad songs and tried to make us feel a little bit better about our own miserable lots.
And for all the wrong reasons, they did. Because our lives were never going to be as awful as theirs seemed to be.
“Office Broadway” feels for all the world like one of those for-rent office amusements, moved from the conference room to studio theater at the New Denver Civic Theatre. A key difference: The four actors here are wonderfully talented singers and comedians.
But I still felt sorry for them. Because while their show — any show — would make for a great (free) way to ditch real work for 90 minutes, turning it into a $30 theater piece that constitutes one of the most expensive tickets in town, warrants it a date with the shredder.
It’s harmless, but also toothless. And the sound system is atrocious (why do theaters mic actors in studio theaters anyway?).
The evening starts out promisingly. Your ticket is a timecard. The cast passes out doughnuts for the “company meeting” that’s about to begin, and you’re asked to sign a card for a departing co- worker. (I wrote: “What floor were you on again? Love, Larry.”)
But then the show begins, and you quickly realize that “Office Broadway” is just a banal rip-off of a hideous rip-off: “Menopause the Musical,” the gold mine that paved the way for more ghastly pop-song parodies like these. Here, “Sittin’ by the Dock of the Bay” becomes “Sittin’ at My Desk All Day,” “Dancing Queen” becomes “Meeting Queen.” And the list of musical atrocities drones on and on. The nadir: “I Believe I Can Fly” becomes “I Don’t Really Like to Fly,” a song about business travel.
The only remotely clever sendup is “I Like a Big Lunch” — two pasty white guys dancing to the tune of “Baby Got Back,” a.k.a. “I Like Big Butts.”
As corporate entertainment does, “Office Broadway” relies on audience participation, and on Thursday, that was the show’s salvation. The narrator/”boss,” well-played by Jill Carr, interviews a job candidate and gets him to do silly antics like speak in Swedish. It was a highlight. So was Lauren Shealy’s singing.
One nice bit had Chris Starkey and Drew Frady doing a “Stomp”-esque percussion type-off that was a good excuse for Starkey to show off his considerable tap skills.
It’s all a lighthearted and innocuous gimmick. But for a subject as rife for cutting, knowing satire as the absurdity of the workplace, “Office Broadway” is frustratingly frivolous. How can a show about office banality not have an ounce of cruelty in it?
Instead, it safely and peppily points out all of the inanities of the workplace you already know: “Help centers” aren’t all that helpful; jobs are being outsourced; every office has an incompetent.
It mocks the universal presence of an office brown-nose. But this far-too-eager-to- please show is the theatrical equivalent.
That said, people laughed. Oh, did they laugh. Sometimes for good reason. Like when a different kind of “call girl” turned a tech-support inquiry into phone sex. But most times they laughed at the most insipid stuff. I was lost in incredulous paradox, until I contemplated that 8 million people tune in each week to “The World According to Jim.” That’s the target audience. And if they laugh and have a good time, then, more power to them.
“Office Broadway” would never make it on Broadway. But, strangely, it seems to be doing just fine on Santa Fe Drive.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Office Broadway”
Musical satire New Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive. Written by Chris and Nate Starkey. Through March 30. 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. $29.50 303-309-3773 or
